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Wednesday, May 31, 2017

Fruit Salad with Champagne

Easy, tasty, colorful, quick, and elegant

Berries, melons, stone fruit, and more. They’re all reaching peak flavor in our part of the world.

So how about using them in a gorgeous dessert? This fruit salad is quick enough for a weeknight dinner, but elegant enough for the fanciest party. (You can even replace the champagne with sparkling cider if you want a nonalcoholic version).

You’ll have plenty of bubbly left over, too, so you can pour everyone a glass to accompany dessert.

Your guests will love the great fresh flavor of this salad. Not to mention the bubbles.

Recipe: Fruit Salad with Champagne

To make this dish, you simply mix together a variety of fruit and let it macerate for a couple of hours. Then right before serving, douse it with champagne or another bubbly.

You can call this dish fruit salad, fruit cup, or fruit cocktail. Or if you want to be fancy, you can call it Macédoine of Fruit in Champagne, or Macedonia of Fruit in Champagne. It’s all the same thing.

We first learned about this dish from Julia Child and Company (a television series and companion cookbook from the 1970s). For years, it was one of our favorite company desserts. We hadn’t made it for a while. But now that we’ve sampled it again, this dish will be back in the recipe rotation.

There are no specific measurements for this dish. Nor is there a detailed recipe. Simply use a mix of whatever fruit looks good (see Notes). Wash it, remove pits or rinds if necessary, and cut it into bite-size pieces. Macerate the fruit with a bit of lemon juice (and some sugar if you want a sweeter dish) for a couple of hours. Then ladle it into bowls, and pour in champagne or another bubbly right before serving. You can garnish with some fresh mint if you want to get fancy.

We generally use 1 to 1½ cups of fruit per serving. Leftovers will keep for a day or two if refrigerated in an airtight container.

Ingredients

a mix of fresh fruit to taste (1 to 1½ cups per serving; see Notes)

~1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice for every 3 to 4 cups fruit (or more to taste; see Notes)

sugar, if needed to sweeten the fruit (very optional)

~2 ounces of champagne or other bubbly per serving (to taste)

garnish of fresh mint leaves (optional)

Procedure

Wash and dry the fruit. Hull/pit/peel/seed it as appropriate. Cut the fruit into bite-size pieces. Place the fruit in a large bowl and mix it together.

Squeeze the lemon juice, then add it to the fruit and mix well. (If using sugar, add it at this time, and mix it in.) Cover the bowl and allow the fruit to macerate in the refrigerator for a couple of hours.

Right before serving, ladle the fruit into individual serving bowls. Pour champagne over each bowl, and serve. Garnish with fresh mint if you wish.

Notes

We sometimes place all the prepared fruit in a nice cut-glass bowl, then bring the bowl to the table. We pour champagne over the bowl, then ladle up servings at table.

For this fruit salad, we used strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, cantaloupe, peaches, and kiwi fruit. Grapes are also wonderful in this dish, as are watermelon, cherries, bananas, apricots, oranges – and just about any other fruit you can think of.

Most fruit is so sweet that we don’t need to add sugar to the maceration. But if you want a sweeter dish, add a tablespoon or two of granulated sugar to the fruit when you macerate it.

Lemon juice adds zing to this dish, and also helps preserve the color of the fruit. Make sure to use freshly squeezed lemon juice – its flavor is so much better. We recommend a tablespoon of juice for every 3 to 4 cups of fruit, but adjust the amount to your own taste. Or just squeeze the juice from one lemon, add it, and be done with it.

In addition to lemon juice, you might want to add a bit of orange juice and/or orange liqueur (Cointreau or Grand Mariner are our favorites) when you macerate the fruit. You could also add a touch of rum or bourbon. Basically, if it sounds good, it probably will be.

For this dish, we recommend using a champagne (or other bubbly) that’s a bit on the sweet side. Prosecco is excellent in this salad, as are Spanish cavas. Both of these are also much cheaper than French champagne.

If you want a booze-free dish, just replace the champagne with nonalcoholic sparkling apple cider. It has a fun flavor, and works well in this recipe.

BTW, under European law, only sparkling wine that comes from the Champagne region of northeastern France (and that is bottled under certain conditions) can be sold as “champagne.”

There are some good US sparkling wines that would work well in this dish. If in doubt, consult your wine merchant – they’ll have ideas that fit your price range.

Hi Mae, those two TV series and the books that accompanied them are my favorites of Julia Child's work. Not her "best," but they have a nice relaxed pace -- the books are kind of chatty -- that's so much fun. Thanks for the comment.

I'm always up for a bit of bubbly and this way makes it totally legit! And of course if there's any bubbly left over I'm sure it would be a perfect accompaniment! What a great dessert for summer, John!

John, this dish looks warm and colorful- just like Julia Child's personality. I was just reading that she refused to have her home number unpublished in the 'telephone book' (remember those things)? On Thanksgiving Day she would receive calls all day from strangers, asking her advice!

A pink sparkler would be terrific in this dish too (because that's what I have on hand). But seriously, a rosé's tart, fruity, and savory flavors are natural complements to the blueberries and other dark fruits. GREG